Full disclosure: while I love Romance and all of its subgenres, Contemporary typically has to work hard to impress me. Problematic elements like sexism (be it from the hero using or belittling women, or from the heroine invoking Not Like the Other Girls) or casual racism are harder to look past, the conflict is far less likely to appeal to me, and when I smell formula, my boots start to feel made for walking. So my review is probably most intended for other readers who are finicky about their Contemporary Romances, like me.

The Polo Season books are written by committee, and it shows in the worst way. Alejandro Del Campo is a typical rich hero with dead spouse angst. He is of the “reacts to suffering with asceticism” variety, which results in every single support character taking every single opportunity to declare him No Fun. Like many a hero of category romance, he comes with the hot and rich pedigree, but when his personality weighs in, he waffles like a madman so as not to offend anyone and to hopefully attract everyone. One of the first things he does is ride a horse at night the night before a game, explain that he is aware this is dangerous to both horse and rider, and then try to justify it. Charming first impression.

But I can take a waffly, not terribly inspiring hero. What really made my nose wrinkle was the heroine. Georgia seems more like a YA heroine than an actual adult who’s had relationships before and actually graduated from university. At times, I may have gone so far as to mutter aloud that she was being infantilised, by either the text or other characters. She’s a vet, and she gets a job with Alejandro’s polo team as the direct result of catching a life-threatening condition in one of their best horses. (yes, the one he rode the night before the game) But her knowledge about horses and equine medicine seems to fluctuate according to what the committee thought most appropriate at the time. Here, we must read her as capable and admirably expert, but in the next chapter, we must read her as cute and naive.

Her naivety made me want to smack her. Every single display of Alejandro’s wealth or the money involved in the sport made her drop her jaw and cry aloud. I’m sure I was supposed to be charmed by her humble ranch girl reactions to large expenditures, but I wasn’t. I was disgusted that she could have horses at home and be completely unaware of the obscene monetary value of a polo horse.

The story unfolds pretty much the way one would expect just from reading the summary on the back of the book. After Georgia saves his beloved mare, Alejandro up and kisses her without any buildup and they go to pants feelings pretty much all the time. She does stupid, childish things that either keep them apart for a modicum of pages–like mistaking his daughter for his girlfriend and being too idiotic to just ask if he’s single–or that make him like her even though they are childish and stupid–like forcing him to buy a subpar horse because she can’t bear that its fated to become glue. …I can sympathise, but her reasoning and behaviour in this situation didn’t make her look very good. Alejandro is also prone to dumb assumptions that could be cleared up with a brief conversation, but he’s generally just a cardboard man who exists to give Georgia sex and make her feel good about herself. There are a couple of false romantic leads, some predictable drama near the end, and then they live happily ever after. So at least there’s that.

It isn’t a complete wash. If you like categories, this delivers on all of the important points. If you don’t mind or actually like Big (and little) misunderstandings, then you’ll wonder what’s wrong with me. The parts of the book that are about polo are pretty good–certainly enough to satisfy readers who love sports romances. And while Alejandro rather bored me, I would not say the same about his family or even the majority of the supporting characters. His mother and daughter are entertaining archetypes written well, and with the exception of an antagonistic character who was wasted as a badly executed villain, I loved the people around Alejandro and Georgia much more than I cared for them.

I thought this would be the kind of Contemporary I would like despite my persnicketiness. With a better heroine and less predictable (and TAME) drama/conflict, it might have rated two or three stars. But I simply did not enjoy this.